Lectionary 13C

Luke 9:51-62

On Tuesday, Jamie and I are scheduled to close on the purchase of a house in Mills River. And in August our youngest daughter will move from her room off campus back into her sorority house for her last semester at Western Carolina. And then in September our oldest daughter will move to a different Boston apartment. For all of us, this summer is focused on figuring out where to make our homes and what those places will look like.

The first things I think of when I think about “home” are comfort and belonging, so it’s hard for me to hear Jesus’ words in today’s gospel. His words, and his home-less-ness, make me uncomfortable.

Our reading is at the beginning of the travel narrative that will consume the next ten chapters of Luke’s gospel. Jesus has told his followers what to expect from their adversaries and he has set his face toward Jerusalem, fully knowing that the costly journey will bring hardship, rejection and death.

Speaking to followers along the way, Jesus admonishes them that he has no place to call home. He tells one, “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head…” Apparently, following Jesus isn’t about finding a home with comfort and belonging. Instead of homesteaders or even pilgrims, followers of Jesus are more like nomads.

Homesteading is characterized by self-sufficiency - growing vegetables and raising livestock for food, canning and preserving, using alternative energy and relying less on those around you. You stake your place and stay there.

Pilgrimages are journeys that have a particular destination. The journey follows well-traveled routes that have been followed over centuries. Pilgrims walk in the footsteps of history.

But nomads don’t’ claim a particular place for any length of time. They travel to different places according to their needs. They carry their belongings with them. They construct temporary shelter and move with the tides and winds, temperatures and time. They have their own languages, cultures and traditions. They find their belonging in their community.

So, while Jesus’ words aren’t warm and fuzzy, maybe that’s the point. Jesus never says that having a home or tending to parents or family are bad. What he says is that nothing can come before God and God’s kingdom. Before any other identity we may have, we are God’s people and our home is in God.

The grace in Jesus’ words here may not be as obvious as it sometimes is, but grace is there.

Grace is there

in the in-between places when we aren’t sure where we’ll find rest and there’s uncertainty as plans are changing and developing;

in knowing that we can step away from the swirl of grief when it feels like a tether, tying us down;

in hearing that all the responsibility isn’t ours alone; we can rely on others to tend to the needs we see in the world, too;

in recognizing that we don’t have to have everything buttoned up and all the problems of the world solved in order to be faithful.

What a relief!

We make our home in God’s grace and love for us.

Knowing God’s goodness, we can believe that God will help us care for the people and things around us too. Because God loves us, we can have confidence that God cares about those whom we love too. Because God clothes the lilies of the field, we can be assured that God will tend to our needs too.

There is freedom in trusting that God’s goodness is enough. Unburdened, we are free to respond to God’s presence and loving action in the world. Leaving behind what is dead or past, we are free to look for what is alive and focus on what is ahead.

Life takes on a new shape when our self-sufficiency becomes God-dependency, our footsteps are ordered by God and our comfort and belonging are found in God.

This cross-shaped life can be disorderly, chaotic and turbulent. The movie “Blue Miracle” tells the story of a couple in Cabo San Lucas who run an orphanage there. They were caring for about two dozen boys who had come off the city streets. They found themselves in crisis, living in a building that needed repairs they couldn’t make and owing the bank payments they couldn’t afford. But as the story unfolds, you see them choose the good at each turn. There were opportunities to solve their problems by making other faster, easier but illegal or unethical choices, but they didn’t make those choices. Instead, they chose to continue to take the next faithful step and to look for what was good and hopeful.

I think that’s what following Jesus looks like – taking the next faithful step and waiting on God to see what happens. 

I believe that’s where we are at Grace too, as the call committee continues its work interviewing candidates to find the next senior pastor and we are involved in the life and ministries of the congregation. We are witnessing what God is doing in the lives of our children and youth through VBS, camps and service learning, and in the lives of our siblings in Christ in Durango Mexico as our team serves there this week. We glimpse God in the many ways we care for each other, learn celebrate and worship together.

The challenge we have from this week’s gospel is to notice the things that keep us from following Jesus fully and freely - attachments, responsibilities, fears. And the invitation is to talk with God about those things, trusting in God’s grace and goodness.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for your Son Jesus who makes hard journeys with us, guiding us and staying with us.

Help us surrender to a life of following Jesus and finding our home in you.

Take away our fears and our “shoulds” and “musts” so that we can take the next faithful step with you, wherever it leads.

We pray in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Trinity Sunday

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Psalm 8

So, I have a question for you this morning: What do a three-leaf clover, an ice cube and the sun all have in common?

They all fall short as ways of explaining the Holy Trinity – the doctrine that says that God is three distinct persons in One. All three of these analogies stumble into a heresy –a belief that’s contrary to Christian tradition – known as modalism that says God exists in different forms or modes but isn’t actually three distinct persons. If you insist on having an explanation, the best one I have come across says that “the Bible says that when it comes to God, 1 + 1+ 1 = 1.”[i] Of course, in the math we learn in school, that doesn’t work either.

And maybe that’s the best way to answer questions about the Trinity - to name that it is beyond our comprehension, rationale or logic. God doesn’t follow any of our careful plans or fit into neat boxes or formulas that add up. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” (16:12) There simply are truths about God and God’s actions that we cannot understand.

What Scripture provides isn’t answers or explanations, but inspiration, that helps us know who God is and who we are as God’s people.

Before I ever went to seminary, I went on a women’s retreat with my home congregation, and I remember the Bible studies throughout the retreat looked at passages that offered language for God that was different than Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some of the participants were uncomfortable with Matthew’s image of God as a mothering hen (Matthew 23) or Isaiah’s illustration of God as a laboring mother (Isaiah 42). Imagining God - when God is beyond our understanding - is challenging.

Being attentive to the language we use for God isn’t about replacing or dismissing traditional language. Instead, the many scriptural images for God help us expand our understanding of who God is. Liturgical scholar and author Gail Ramshaw describes the images in Scripture as treasures, writing that

some of the treasure is old and some new. Treasure that is old is often of more value than that which is new, just as old images might be layered with more meaning for the self and the community than new images. [If we] think that only old treasures are valuable [we] forget that God's Spirit continues each week to offer our world signs of divine mercy.[ii]

The different words to describe God can feel strange in our mouths, but for the person who has suffered abuse by an earthly parent or bullying in school, finding God as a fortress and avenger in the Psalms or as a refuge in Jeremiah may bring comfort. For anyone who is awed by the beauty of our natural world, seeing God as a dove and an eagle in Mark and Deuteronomy or as rain and thunder in Hosea and Exodus helps us connect with our Creator God.

Today’s reading from Proverbs 8 invites us to expand our understanding of God to include Woman Wisdom. In Scripture, the feminine Sophia or wisdom can refer to the Holy Spirit and, in these verses, we hear her testify that she was there “at the beginning of God’s creating work.” (v. 22) As God’s companion, she was there “at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” (v. 23)

Some hear this text echoed in the prologue of John’s gospel where the Evangelist John says, “¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²

He was in the beginning with God.”

The Trinity is Father, Son and Holy Spirit and
the Trinity is God, Jesus and Wisdom.

In these verses, Woman Wisdom calls out “to all that live” as she retells the creation story and how she rejoiced with God and delighted in the inhabited world and in the human race. (8:30-31) The Hebrew verb there is not “rejoice” but “play” so Old Testament scholar Robert Altar translates verses 30 and 31 as

I was His delight day after day, playing before Him at all times, playing in the world, His earth, and my delight with humankind.[iii]

Author David Weiss has written a version of the creation story where he pictures the Creator giggling as She imagines all the things she will make, and humming as She scoops up the “softest, nicest-smelling Earth,” and makes “Humus Beings.” The delight and joy is contagious.

And the object of this divine delight is us. We delight God.

Let me say that again. You and I delight God.

In a world that measures success by productivity, it’s easy to forget that play, delight and joy are all part of a well-ordered world, but they are.

And in our modern world filled with division, cynicism and conflict, it’s easy to lose sight of one another as beings in whom God delights, but we are.

Psalm 8 continues this theme of divine joy and delight.

The psalmist asks, in verse 4, “What are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, human beings that you should care for them?”

The psalm assures us that God knows and remembers each one of us, “[making us] little less than divine” [crowned with glory and honor].” (verse 5)

And then it acknowledges how God has entrusted us with care for each other and all the works of God’s hands.

The same God who delights in us invites us
to care for the awesome creation we enjoy,
to see God’s majesty in it, and
to find joy and delight in that trust and care.

May our lives honor God’s invitation into life together, and may we find joy and delight in it.

Let us pray.

Holy God,

In the beginning, You were there, and the Word was there, and Wisdom was there.

And from the beginning you delighted in humankind and have shown us your majesty and your mercy.

Open our ears and our hearts to hear You call to us and to respond to your Word and Spirit, Your Son and Wisdom.

Amen.

[i] Tim Beilharz. “Why analogies of the Trinity fail.” Youthworks. https://youthworks.net/articles/analogies-of-the-trinity, accessed June 10, 2022.

[ii] Gail Ramshaw. Treasures Old and New. Kindle Edition. 36.

[iii] Robert Altar. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary. 379-380.